Mick Clifford: Ghosts of the pandemic must be faced down

On Thursday, Judge Mary Fahy dismissed the charges against the Golfgate Four: Former Fianna Fáil senator Donie Cassidy, Independent TD Noel Grealish, and hoteliers John Sweeney and James Sweeney.

Truckloads of hot air were generated this week in response to the respective conclusions of two pandemic-related inquiries.

Reaction in both cases was dictated by politics rather than reason, at a time when reason is increasingly banished from the practice of politics.

Meanwhile, there is a desperate need for a far bigger inquiry than the two mentioned above, and the failure to establish this would surely be a scandal if reason hadn’t already left town.

On Thursday, Judge Mary Fahy dismissed the charges against the Golfgate Four. Former senator Donie Cassidy, Independent TD Noel Grealish, and father-and-son hotel proprietors John and James Sweeney were found not guilty of criminally breaching public health laws.

Over three days, Galway District Court heard evidence of what occurred when the Oireachtas Golf Society gathered at the Station House Hotel in Clifden on August 19, 2020.

The evidence was tendered for the prosecution, but it nearly exclusively went to the case for the defence. A succession of witnesses — former and serving politicians and public servants, and a judge — all testified that public health guidelines were strictly observed at the hotel.

The only matter at issue was whether a partition had divided the function room in two. This would have ensured that the gatherings on either side of the partition numbered less than 50, the limit allowed under legislation.

Judge Fahy found that to be the case, and dismissed the charges.

Much of the reaction, particularly on social media, has been expressed in howls of outrage. The accused, in this version, were obviously guilty, not based on evidence, but because they represented ‘The Establishment’. The whole farrago, according to the wise denizens of social media, is another example of the ignoble elite lording it over the virtuous people.

As somebody who observed practically all the evidence, I would have been shocked by any other verdict than that delivered. Guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is a high bar. The prosecution lawyer, Eoghan Cole, battled gamely, but he was playing uphill against a gale. Nothing that the court heard pointed to evidence of criminal intent or contempt for the law.

If anything, questions could be asked about the decision to prosecute. Did the public mood rather than the preponderance of evidence influence the DPP’s decision, consciously or otherwise? What would have been the reaction if the DPP had decided not to prosecute?

None of which excuses the holding of the event. After the verdict on Thursday, Cassidy said he had been “vindicated”. Certainly in legal terms that is so. But the gathering was a tone-deaf exercise from a class of people who should have known better at a time when so many had sacrificed so much.

Contrary to the garbage that has been spouted since Thursday, a high cost was paid by many of those who attended. Whether the cost was proportionate is open to debate, but they were all adults, accustomed to the vagaries of public life. A whole range of people across society less fortunate than those who attended that dinner have suffered disproportionate pain and loss during the pandemic.

Champagne-gate

Proportionality was also at the heart of the outcome of another ‘gate’ this week, that of the champagne variety.

The tweet posted, and swiftly deleted, by Niall Burgess.

A report into the taking of a selfie in Iveagh House, home to the Department of Foreign Affairs, found that the event was “a breach of social distance guidance” and it “caused offence, inflicted reputational damage on the department, and undermined internal morale”.

The breach occurred after a long day at work in June 2020 where the staff were attempting to get Ireland elected to the UN Security Council in June 2020. It lasted about a minute.

Personally, I don’t give a fiddler’s about the Security Council, and would prefer if our international standing was leveraged in different ways. But these people did consider they were working in the name of the country. Their jubilance led to a momentary loss of reason.

The report recommended that the general secretary at the time and a few other officials make donations to charity.

So far, so proportionate. Except the political opposition are more interested in dragging Simon Coveney into the matter and presenting this as one more example of ‘them and us’ — the establishment and so-called ordinary people.

“This internal investigation was never going to provide accountability because the role of the minister is absent,” Pearse Doherty told Morning Ireland.

“We do know he did nothing when he was alerted on the night to this serious breach.”

Coveney did handle the matter clumsily, but the attempt to paint him as some sort of sub-Boris Johnson figure was ridiculous. Unfortunately, it was also standard fare in politics today.

What about an inquiry that is desperately waiting to happen? The Government has set up an expert group to identify lessons to be learned from the pandemic. By right, there should be a full inquiry, with broad terms of reference. Such an inquiry, although relatively limited in scope, was established after the economic collapse in 2008. This time it is even more important that shortcomings are identified in order to ensure there is no repeat.

Mistakes were made, by the Government and by others. It simply could not be any other way.

The pandemic represented an existential crisis in which swift reaction was required in order to alleviate the worst of what was occurring. In all likelihood, some people died, directly or indirectly, because of less-than-optimum decisions. Again, this was inevitable. There are few, if any, governments in the democratic world that did not make mistakes over the last two years.

Did vested interests exercise greater influence than should have been the case? We don’t know, but suspicion persists that they did. Were far-reaching mistakes made in handling the nursing home sector? Probably. Why were there delays in implementing mask-wearing, the use of antigen testing, installing ventilation?

These and other questions require answers, not in order to point fingers, but to learn. On a cursory basis, it looks as if the Government and public health officials did a relatively decent job under horrendous circumstances.

Yet there is no political will to get cracking with an inquiry. 

The Government appears to be scared stiff to embark on anything that may result in some negative headlines.

Micheál Martin and his Cabinet believe that positive actions they took will be skipped over, the negative stuff held up as exhibits of an administration at sea and out of touch.

They may well be correct, but that doesn’t matter.

Power has its price, irrespective of a prevailing political culture where everything is fitted into a populist narrative.

The imperative to learn lessons and prepare for the next pandemic should trump all else, and the sooner it gets under way the better for everybody in the long run.